guess what i’m having for dinner tonight. go ahead. guess. i’ll be waiting.

a vlt?

nope.

a grilled cheese made with galaxy’s superlative vegan cheddar cheese slices? (no, this isn’t an advertisement. it’s just what i happen to think of it)

nope.

give up?

spiral diner’s superlative meat loaf. i’ve had all the ingredients, and was just waiting for when i felt like making it. that was tonight. my oven timer just went off–i’ve got to spread the top with ketchup, cover it with foil, and bake it for another 15 minutes. just need to get the potatoes ready to mash, and i’ll be eating one of my favourite comfort dinners.

The crazy project at work is finished, which means I get to work my usual hours. I’m hoping this means I’ll find a little more energy, because I have a huge, huge to-do list that needs attending to. So far I’ve only done one item on that list. And part of another item, but there’s so much more to go.

One thing that I’ll be doing a lot of this week is cooking. I’ve got 3 cupcake recipes I want to try, and I got ambitious and made my menu out for the week. Some of the delicacies I’ll be making include samosa-stuffed baked potatoes and meatloaf with smashed potatoes. I’m also going to make a white bean dish, and vegan macaroni salad. The refrigerator is full of yummy veggies, so I really have no excuse for not cooking this week. I really do need to quit eating VLT’s for supper every night.

Did I tell you I got a henna tattoo on Friday night? No? It’s on my wrist, a kind of celtic-y heart. And there’s a ginormous smudge because when I pulled my wallet out of my handbag to pay for the threading & tattoo, I accidentally swiped the corner of my wallet across my still-wet tattoo. !!!! They tried to clean it up and fix it, and I will give them credit–if you didn’t know what I’d done, you wouldn’t know I’d done it. But some of the lines are already fading–:( –which makes me really sad. I need to get some henna and touch it up. Any tips? I did put some lemon juice & sugar on it Friday night, but so much of the dried henna had fallen off by then that I don’t know how much good it did.

The incomparable Izzybella spent most of the day Saturday in the emergency room. She seems to be doing all right, all things considered. But if you wouldn’t mind saying a prayer, or sending some light, I know she’d appreciate it.

Lolo and I spent much of the day together on Saturday, too. I’d have been at the hospital with Izzy, but she said not to. So we got pedicures, and I fretted the whole time (and prayed) until I heard from her. I’ve got a nice rich chocolatey brown on my toenails. And then we went to see Sorority Row, and seeing it a second time was worth it when I heard Lolo groan out loud at the incredibly hokey and cliche-ish last shot. For the record, I really don’t want to see it again. Okay? I’m looking forward to new movies such as Couples Retreat, and that cute Kristin Bell romcom that I want to see despite its being a romcom, etc., but no more Sorority Row.

I guess this is enough rambling for one day. You may now return to your regularly scheduled lives.

what do you do when you’re a (mostly) vegan with mad cravings? either try to get the cravings out of your mind, or find a way to meet the cravings and still retain your integrity.

meet my new loves.

The first is the VLT. You toast some good grainy bread, and smear on some soyonaise/nayonnaise/vegenaise, whatever you prefer, and sprinkle on some vegan bacon bits. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s not. Then you add some nice organic baby lettuce and some sliced tomatoes, smoosh it together and cut in diagonal halves. Serve it with a handful of organic potato chips with sea salt, or some crunchy veggies, or whatever you want. It’s wicked good. And even if you’re out of the T, it’s fantabulous with just the L (and the V, of course).

The next is the Galaxy cheddar flavour rice cheese slices. They are vegan. And I was really skeptical of how good they may or may not taste. But I seem to recall reading a positive review somewhere, so I bought a pack. I nuked an Amy’s vegan black bean burrito, and topped it with a slice of the cheddar cheese. The label proclaims that it does melt. I disagree, but will admit that it got a little melty. The flavour was very good, and it added a nice little flavour to the burrito.

I plan to try a vegan grilled cheese, if I can ever get over the constant craving for the vlt. although now that I think of it, that does sound very good and I do have the ingredients. hmmmmm. wanders away from the computer. ok. i’m back with a nice hot crispy earth balancey buttery melty cheddary sandwich and it tastes dang good! A couple of dill pickle slices would be good with this rich satisfying sandwich, but it is delectable even without the tang of the pickles.

It’s been a week, one of those crazy insane weeks that rush by and drag slowly on all at the same time. Joe’s back in southern California and loving it. I’m here with my fur-babies in rainy DFW and dealing with it.

I love my job. I know I keep saying that, but it’s true. I really love my job. I get to work with fantastic people, and I work hard all day so that when I walk out the door I feel tired and satisfied and ready for the evening. And I play hard on the weekends to get ready for another week. I’m not used to this level of job satisfaction.

Today was nice. I woke up at 6:30 from the most crazy insane dreams I’ve had in quite some time. I won’t bore you with most of the details (is that collective sigh of relief I’m hearing?), but during a bit of the dream I was singing along with the radio to a song about polyjuice potion.

!!!

When I woke up, I remembered two lines of the song, and regaled Liz with it after breakfast (grits & toast because I could NOT tolerate one more bite of oatmeal). She said I’m weird. As I drove home, I made up another two lines of the song, and kept laughing at the ridiculousness of it. I mean, seriously, people–a song about polyjuice potion? I started to go right back to bed, because I was still really sleepy, but figured I’d better stop and write down the song and pick out the melody on the piano. Good thing, too, because by the time I woke up the second time I’d forgotten it. I sang it to Joe tonight, and he told me I’m weird. He also said there were coyotes howling because they could hear me singing. He thinks he’s funny.

Lolo and I went out and meandered here and there. I took her to my favourite place to eat, the inimitable Spiral Diner, and she loves it as much as izzy and jehara and pasta man and amethyst do. We started off with the hummus (good, although I will confess to liking Cosmic Cafe’s better). I had a glass of watermelon cream soda (very tasty), and she had some rooibos tea. She got a huge monster mega salad with southwestern ranch dressing, and I had a VLT. It’s so easy to get into the habit of eating the same thing every time, so I have been making a point of trying something new. The VLT was seriously tasty. And we shared a little vanilla cake for dessert.

What else–we went to Half Price Books, where we got a couple of books for her younger son and I got a book about chakra healing (I’m still having a lot of problems with my throat chakra). And we went to the mall. There were lots of people at the mall, since it was all rainy outside. And we went to see Final Destination Whatever in 3D. It was the kind of movie that defines inanity. As in, “let’s see. how many different disgusting and graphic ways can we think of to kill people?” inane. There was definite grossosity. And viscera. Everywhere. And really lame dialogue and wooden acting. I mean, if you’d (a) seen a lot of people killed in a terrible tragedy at a speedway and (b) seen that one of the people who was saved from the speedway ended up accidentally dragging himself to death and catching fire in his attempts to murder someone and (c) nearly been killed yourself in a convoluted car wash accident and (d) a guy you used to date and were still friendish with exploded when he got sucked into the pool drain, would you be excitedly trying on sunglasses at the mall and talking about how hot they were? If you would, please explain it to me? Lolo owes me BIG TIME for that piece of dreck!

When I got home, the dogs wanted attention. So I had Molly sitting on my right and Scout jumping up on my left and both dogs vying for my sole attention. Then Molly began begging for a walk. This is the dog who has been known to walk to the back door and look outside in the rain, before looking at me and shaking her head to tell me that she was sorry for making me get up and open the door, but she just couldn’t bear to go outside and pee in all that rain. So I took the dogs for a walk in the rain. And she peed. And then when I got home from going out for an errand later on, neither dog would go outside in the rain to take care of their business. Granted, if I had to go outside in the back yard and do my business where anyone could see me, and where it was wet and muddy, I wouldn’t want to either. So I guess it shouldn’t bother me that they don’t want to. But it does, at least when Scout wakes me up at 2 a.m. and I open the door for him and he looks outside for a second and then nonchalantly trots off and jumps onto the couch. I think he’s saying, “la la la la la, if I don’t look at her then she won’t realize that I woke her up for nothing but there ain’t no way I’m going to go outside in that rain so I’ll just jump up on the couch and act natural until she’s asleep again.”

Yeah.

Oh–and did I tell you I made Spiral’s mac’n’cheese this week? Really really good. Tomorrow will be a day of cooking. I plan to make a batch of cupcakes, and some bread, and maybe Spiral’s “meat”loaf. Mmmmmm. That would be good with some smashed potatoes. Maybe I’ll try the chai cupcakes. I’d kind of like to make a batch of those for Jehara’s wedding reception.

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"You can get sympathy or you can get better, but you can't get both. You can be in your comfort zone or you can have growth, but you can't have both. You can be interested or you can be sold-out committed, but you can't entertain both. You can have excuses or have results, but you can't do both. Choose the path that develops your visceral fortitude." ---Mario Cortes

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